The present invention relates generally to the field of telecommunications and more particularly to a method of operating a virtual private network.
Companies often use abbreviated dialing plans at a location. This allows the user to dial an internal number (abbreviated number) to reach other people within the same location. Virtual private networks (VPN) have allowed companies having several locations in the same Local Access and Transport Area (LATA) to share the abbreviated dialing plan. The VPN allows the various locations of a company to also provide other features such as call transfer, multiway calling, and call forwarding. A company that decides to use a VPN can provide all these features without buying expensive Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) for each location and without having to lease lines between each of the locations. This has provided the customer with flexibility and cost savings over setting up a standard private network. Unfortunately, companies that have locations in two or more LATAs could not use a VPN to provide these services. This is because the present regulatory environment requires two or more carriers when connecting two separate LATAs using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). As a result, these customers were required to lease lines between the LATAs and use access codes for the various locations, to obtain services similar to a VPN.
Thus there exists a need for a method of operating a virtual private network that works across several LATAs and several service providers.
A method of operating a virtual private network that overcomes these and other problems includes the steps of: (a) dialing a custom number; (b) receiving the custom number at a switch of a first carrier; (c) routing the call to a switch of a second carrier based on having received the custom number; and (d) when the call to the switch of the second carrier includes a plain old telephone number translation of the customer number, routing the call over the second carrier to a service switching point of a third carrier.